It's Punny (in French)
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| It's Punny (in French) | |
| Number | 3471 |
| Broadcast Date | FEBRUARY 19, 2019 |
| Episode Length | 32:03 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang |
| Guests | Patrick Beja |
Google sent out a press invite for its Game Developers Conference keynote on March 19. Sources suggest its for the launch of a game streaming service called Project Stream. An all-you-can play cloud-based video game subscription service.
Guest
Quick Hits
- Samsung's new foldable phone will be called...the Galaxy Fold. Evan Blass, aka evleaks on Twitter, reported details about that and the Galaxy S10 family of devices ahead of tomorrow’s launch, but Samsung itself ran a TV commercial airing prematurely in Norway that backed up the claims. Among the things shown in the commercial are a holepunch style for the front-facing camera, an in-screen fingerprint reader and the ability to wireless charge another device.
- Walmart's latest earnings report U.S. sales up 4.2 percent over the same time last year, and a 43 percent rise in e-commerce sales in the US, beating analysts' expectations. Walmart said the strong e-commerce growth was due to the expansion of its grocery pickup and delivery businesses, and broader offerings on Walmart.com.
- Ghostery published a study Friday showing theirs and other ad blocker extensions had sub-millisecond impact on Chrome network requests, disputing the need to change how ad blocking extensions work in Chrome. The Chrome team has now withdrawn their plans to require extensions to use DeclarativeNetRequest API instead of the older webRequest API. This would have limited or broken how many ad blocking extensions worked.
Top Stories
- A number of French Twitch and YouTube channel producers have banded together to organize "Le Grand Debathon", inviting members of the French government to discuss social and political issues with citizens and influencers. The discussions were streamed on Twitch and YouTube, and incorporated interactions with chat rooms. The initiative follows the unrest and "gilets jaunes" movement, and the country wide "Grand Debat" the government is organizing to consult the people over a period of several weeks.
- Amazon has operated a joint venture in China since 2004 as a way to buy imported goods. Caijing reported Tuesday that Amazon is in talks to merge its China business with another cross-border shopping platform called Kaola, run by China's NetEase. Amazon had 6 percent of China's import shopping business, well behind NetEase's Kaola, Alibaba's TMall Global, and JD.com. Merging with Amazon would be a way to boost Kaola's inventory.
- Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei gave interviews to the BBC and CBS this week. He told the BBC, "Even if they persuade more countries not to use us temporarily, we can always scale things down a bit." He also said, "Our company will never undertake any spying activities. If we have any such actions, then I'll shut the company down." He told CBS that "it is not possible" that Huawei equipment has a back door. However, The Information reports its sources say a Huawei engineer met with the maker of a sensor for the Apple Watch in order to press for details. The suppliers says it did not tell them anything. The Information says that Huawei rewards employees with bonuses pegged to the confidential value of information they collect for the company. Huawei said it respects third-party intellectual property and requires suppliers to uphold a high standard of ethics.
- Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon X55 5G modem, a follow-up to its first 5G modem, the X50. Qualcomm will begin to share the chip with its partners in the coming months, with first devices shipping before the end of the year. The Snapdragon X55 has a theoretical maximum of 7 gigabits per second, compared to 5 gigabits for the X50. It also has support for adaptive antenna tuning for sub-6GHz 5G which helps power efficiency, and Qualcomm says the X55’s flexibility should make it a better fit for devices beyond smartphones and Wi-Fi hotspots.
- Engineers at Rochester Institute of Technology have designed a toilet seat that can measure your blood pressure, blood oxygen level and stroke volume every time someone sits on it. The engineers say it needs more testing but so far it stands up to comparable hospital equipment like standard ECGs. Another problem to address is how to discard readings from when a user is actually using the toilet rather than just sitting, which can affect readings. If you're wondering why we have avoided the obvious puns in explaining this story it's because the incomparable Beth Mole used them all in her article for Ars Technica.
Discussion
Thing of the Day
- Nate Lanxon is back with a short preview of the next Tech's Message podcast Special Weird Farm Stuff Edition!
Mailbag
- I know you haven't talked about this in a few weeks but I figured since the resident Socialist is on today, what is the situation in Europe in regards to 5G? I've just moved to Germany from the states so I know I'm going to miss out on the initial roll-out there for at least a few years. If I remember correctly, 4G came to Europe later than the states but ended up being faster. Do you think this will be the same over here?
- Sent by Rob from Ramstein AFB
YouTube
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| Preceded by: "Dancing With Copyrights" |
It's Punny (in French) |
Followed by: "Samsung’s Galaxy Unfolds" |